When HM King Carl XVI Gustaf celebrated his 70th birthday in 2016, Umeå University honoured him with a gift – a scientific seminar. The theme of the seminar is the Arctic – a highly topical issue – not least because of the climate changes that pose a substantial threat to the world we live in.

Evening – Popular science talks at the naturum. Talks presented in the upstairs lecture hall.

17.00-17.20 - Judith Sarneel - Title: “Science during your tea break”. Citizen scientists study plant decay using tea bags. As tea is basically plant material, it can be used to test effects of climate change on decay rates and the resulting release of greenhouse gases. Last year 250 Swedish school classes buried the tea in a gradient from north to south Sweden. After three months, the tea was retrieved, dried, weighed again and the data was send to us for analysison the effects of climate on plant decomposition rates and greenhouse gas emissions

Evening - popular science talks at the naturum. Talks presented in the upstairs lecture hall.

17.00-17.20 - Maja Sundqvist – Title: “the use of elevational gradients to study arctic plant communities in a changing climate”. Elevational gradients are powerful natural study systems of how organisms, communities, and ecosystems vary with temperature and the associated environmental factors that change with elevation.

17.30-17.50 - Kjell Bolmgren – Naturens Kalender – Citizen Science.

18.00-18.20 - Keith Larson – Title: “100 years of climate change in Abisko”. For over 100 years, scientists have tracked both climate and environmental changes in the Arctic of Sweden. The last three decades have seen the most dramatic changes.

Biography

Dieter Müller – Professor of Social and Economic Geography and Deputy-Vice Chancellor, Umeå University. As geographer, he is interested in studying tourism in relation to regional development in the European North. As a deputy Vice-chancellor he is also head of the board of Umeå University’s Arctic Research Center (ARCUM) and committed to develop preconditions for research and facilitate outreach.

Tom Korsman – Head of the Department of Ecology and Environmental Sciences, Associate Professor (Docent). Research in palaeolimnology. Teaching physical geography and environmental science within the study programmes in Biology and Earth Science, and Environmental Health.

Jan Karlsson – Professor in Aquatic biogeochemistry and Director of the Climate Impacts Research Centre at the Department of Ecology and Environmental Sciences, Umeå University. His research focus on climate impact on biogeochemistry and ecology of high latitude aquatic ecosystems.

Keith Larson– Project Coordinate for the Climate Impacts Research Centre, Department of Ecology and Environmental Sciences and lead researcher for the Nuolja Phenology project. His research focuses on how organisms adapt to changing climate, phenology mismatches, and range shifts. His teaching focuses on integrating with research in the field.

Judith Sarneel – Assistant professor and researcher at the Climate Impacts Research Station, Department of Ecology and Environmental Sciences, Umeå University. She did her PhD on the development of fen wetland ecosystems in 2010. She is an enthusiastic spatial ecologist with a specific interest in wetland ecology, soil-plant interactions, plant community assembly and restoration. She leads the citizen science project Teatime4science .

Pär Byström – Assistant professor and researcher at the Climate Impacts Research Station, Department of Ecology and Environmental Sciences, Umeå University. Ecologist with a focus on size-dependent interactions between fish and their resources and its consequences for the fish population dynamics in lake ecosystems.